Casting Shadows

This Saturday Seed presents an idea for starting a Heroes Unlimited campaign.

The seed
An inventor tries to put her social concern and activism into practice by developing exceptional gear to aid a hand-picked team of students and young professionals pick up the mantle of a fallen superhero.

Planting the seed
This seed is perhaps most useful for starting a new campaign or transitioning to new characters after the loss or retirement of old ones. The characters at the start of play should be the sort of upright and capable young people likely to draw the eye of a moral mentor and be open to the idea of operating outside the law for the good of their fellow citizens.

The details

The city has benefitted from the protection of a selfless and dedicated protector (or protectors) for many years. Several months ago, sources in the media and on the street began to suggest that he had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of a criminal organization. Whatever the truth of the matter, he has not been seen since and crime has been on the rise. 

Something has got to be done.

Tenured Professor and concerned citizen, Bonita McCall, has decided to take matters into her own hands and forge a team of heroes if no hero will rise on their own. Using her advanced degrees in engineering and robotics, she is determined to provide superheroic levels of support to the struggling forces of law and order if nature will not provide the city with it.

All goes according to plan from recruitment through R&D and specialized training on up to production, when suddenly massive internal changes occur in her university, her funding is cut, and her prototypes ‘locked away for review’ by a newly formed ‘ethical standards’ committee.

Is this the end of the dream?

What is going on

Powerful forces are in motion to bring the city under the control of a multi-tiered cabal of visionaries led by a group of political idealists who see themselves as the founding fathers of a new nation. Recruiting from disenfranchised former military and police, the group has built a confounding network of interlocking criminal organizations which is now beginning to move into an active phase. 

Step two of their plan was taking out the upper and lower order vigilantes and heroes outside the law. Stage three is getting the political leverage to control the infrastructure of the city. This led them to McCall’s disguised project, and enabled them to shut it down and take it over.

What are the heroes in training going to do about it?

Enjoy~